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Margaret: Welcome back Laurie. We visited with you about Free Men and Dreamers, historical fiction, a few months ago. It looks like Awakening Avery is a different genre.
Laurie: Awakening Avery is contemporary – a nice diversion from my historical work.
Margaret: Tell us about the main storyline.
Laurie: Our lead character is an LDS author/wife and mother who gets catapulted from her comfortable support role in the family to the lead after the untimely death of her wonderful husband. Although her husband, Paul, had been slowing fading for a long time, Avery had closed her eyes to the toll his illness and death had taken on her and her family. Her oldest son tells her he needs to get away to deal with his grief, and she is forced to face some hard truths—things are falling apart in her once perfect family, and instead of preparing for the eventuality of Paul’s death, she has been shriveling away. Avery needs to step up and take action, a daring thing that requires her to grow and stretch in ways she never imagined.
Margaret: I hear the dedication of Awakening Avery is also very personal to you.
Laurie: It is. It reads, “To my father, Allen K. Chilcoat, the chef behind the magic of slumgolian and peanut-butter balls; and to my mother, Bernice, who kept us alive despite his kitchen exploits.”
Of all the books I’ve written, or that I will ever write, this one probably best reflects my childhood memories of my father. He is the model for George because when Dad went into the kitchen to cook we knew it was going to be an adventure.
Margaret: So Slumgolian is a real dish? You actually ate it?
Laurie: Oh yes! I think the recipe had its beginnings in Iceland where my father was stationed for a time. The men threw whatever they had into a pot and called it Slumgolian. One evening when we were camping, after a long day of crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay, my dad offered to make dinner. Mom was horrified at what was being thrown together—baked beans, chicken noodle soup, corn, peas, you name it—but Dad insisted we’d love it. It looked dreadful, but Dad’s presentation and sales pitch transformed it from slop to Slumgolian, a very exotic foreign dish.
Margare
t: Sound like he was very convincing and much more of a cook than my father. What about the Kool-Aid pancakes and Peanut Butter Balls?
Laurie: Yeah, they were all my dad’s recipes.
Margaret: Yum. I remember Kook-Aid and Peanut Butter cookies my mother made – but this sounds even more fun. Where can we find Awakening Avery? It sounds like a great gift.
Laurie: You may read the first chapter here. You can purchase it at Deseret Book and other LDS book stores.
Margaret: Thank you for dropping by. We will be looking forward to having you back when book four comes out for Free Men and Dreamers.
Laurie was born and raised in rural Maryland, surrounded by the history-rich cities of Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore which provide the settings for her books. She is also a popular historical speaker and workshop presenter.
Laruie is a member of the LDStorymakers authors’ group as well as ANWA, a writing group for LDS women.
Where do you currently live?
~ Tom and I still live in a little town called Mount Airy in Carroll County, Maryland, where we raised our family. We’ve lived here for 26 years.
Who are your books published through?
~It’s a little crazy around here because I currently have books under three publishers right now. I’m under contract with Covenant who published my first novel, “Unspoken” and the first two volumes of my “Free Men and Dreamers” series, “Dark Sky at Dawn” and “Twilight’s Last Gleaming.” They pulled out of the series, but readers wrote, asking me to finish the story, so I published volume three, “Dawn’s Early Light” through an Amazon affiliate. I also submitted a romance to Covenant, but they don’t handle literary romances, so I submitted it to Leatherwood Press who is about to launch it this spring.
After writing your first book, how long did it take you to get published?
~ I got really lucky on “Unspoken.” Covenant was the first place I submitted it, and they sent it back, asking me to rework some things. I resubmitted it a few months later and it was accepted. The process from first submission to it’s debut on the shelves was probably about eighteen months.
How did you celebrate your first published novel?
~ I remember this so clearly. My daughter was a student at Utah State in Logan. I was visiting her at Easter time when the call came through. I was so nervous I walked outside so no one would see me melt down if the call was a rejection. When the senior editor said those words, “We’ve decided to accept your manuscript for publication,” I screamed! My daughter Amanda, and all her room mates, cheered for me, then I called my husband and the other kids. It was awesome. Equally splendid was the day the box arrived with the first copies of the book inside. It was magical and surreal. I felt like a new mommy again!
Are your upcoming novels also about the Civil War era?
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